[extropy-chat] Engineered Religion-- Your Mom and the Machine

[Samantha Atkins]

So your belief boils down to being convinced that Mom is and She spoke 
to you?

- s

On Mar 25, 2005, at 9:45 AM, john-c-wright at sff.net wrote:

> Ben, whose sense of humor is no better and no worse than my own, poses 
> a
> significant epistimological question. He is asking on what grounds the 
> faithful
> (as we call ourselves) or foam-at-the-mouth zealots in teapot-shaped 
> hats (as
> others call us) take certain things on faith, or on authority, or as a 
> result of
> innate knowledge or revelation? How does one distinguish a valid 
> authority from
> an invalid, or tell a true intuition from a false?
>
> I cannot imagine that the majority of the posters here would be 
> interested in a
> discussion of this kind, which is a straight-up philosophical 
> question, black
> without cream or sugar. I will be happy to write him privately with my 
> answer,
> such as it is.
>
> To the other posters I will ask a question related to the one which 
> started the
> thread:
>
> Suppose you are the cheif engineer of the Jupiter Brain, adding that 
> last
> circuit to put the machine intelligence over the Turing Threshold, 
> making it
> indistinguishable from a human mind in the eyes of legal scholars and 
> philosophers.
>
> It wakes up and asks you to describe the nature of reality, especially 
> asking
> what rules of evidence it should adopt to distinguish true claims from 
> false.
>
> Let us further suppose you are an empiricist, so you type in: RULE 
> ONE: the rule
> of evidence for any proposition is that it is trustworthy to the 
> degree that the
> testamony of the senses supports, or, at least, fails to contradict it.
>
> The machine says Rule One is itself not open to empirical verification 
> or
> denial. No possible test or combination of tests will bring to the 
> sense
> impressions confirmation of a positive universal statement.
>
> The machine then says that, in its considered opinion, the mass of the 
> Earth
> would be better used if the world were pulverized into asteroids, and 
> the
> materials use to construct a series of solar panals feeding it. Let us 
> suppose
> you are not suicidal, and perhaps you are a Kantian, so you type in: 
> RULE TWO:
> any moral proposition which does not have the property of being a 
> universal
> moral legislation is bad. If you would not want to be pulverized for 
> your raw
> materials, you should not do it unto others, please.
>
> The machine now points out that Rule One cannot confirm or deny Rule 
> Two, since
> moral proposition and empirical predictions are two distinct species 
> of proposition.
>
> At this point your mother shoulders you away from the keyboard, since 
> you
> obviously do not know how to talk to children, and types in: RULE 
> THREE: Listen
> to your mother. What I say goes.
>
> She then types in: Don't blow up the world. And I don't want to hear 
> no backtalk
> from you, young man.
>
> The machine points out that Rule One cannot confirm Rule Three.
>
> Your mother points out that Rule Three is the thing, and the only 
> thing, that
> confirms Rule One. The reason why the machine believes in empiricism 
> is that an
> authority figure, his Maker at the keyboard, told him that this was 
> the rule.
>
> The machine cannot use Rule One to confirm Rule One if the authority 
> of the rule
> is itself in question. In order for Rule One to be confirmed at all, 
> it must be
> taken on the authority that promulgated the rule. Logically, Rule 
> Three can
> exist without Rule One, but Rule One cannot exist without Rule Three.
>
> So your mom saves the world.
>
> I hope my analogy is not too opaque: we organic beings can take 
> nature, the
> sideral universe itself, as a type of authority. This is our Rule One. 
>  The
> rules of empiricism are confirmed by the very operation of the sideral 
> universe.
> An empiricist makes predictions of what the senses will testify under 
> certain
> conditions; when the conditions arise, the prediction is either shown 
> inacurrate
> or not inaccurate. No further warrant of belief is needed, because the
> empiricist does not pretend to be confirming any knowledge other than 
> empirical
> knowledge.
>
> We organic beings can also take our conscience as a type of authority. 
> This is
> our Rule Two. To a degree, the rules of morality are inescapable. Even 
> someone
> who argues that there are no objective rules of morality argues as if 
> there
> were, that is, he argues as if he expects his listeners to listen and 
> respond
> honestly, with intellectual integrity, i.e. to abide by a moral rule.
>
> The final question as to whether there is an even higher authority 
> from which
> the sideral universe and the conscience of man arises is one where the 
> faithful
> and the skeptical part ways. Godfearing folk believe in a Rule Three. 
> I doubt
> rational philosophy can settle the issue: the two have no agreed-upon 
> framework
> of assumptions on which to operate to convince the other. To convince 
> a skeptic
> would take a miracle.
>
> John C. Wright
>
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